Additional Remote Access Shenannegans

In my previous post, I expanded on my preferred methods for gaining remote access to my home network. Since then, I have decided to quit using Hyper-V because it’s awful.

I have now decided to move to ProxMox on my server. Proxmox is pretty cool, although the documentation sucks. I recently started using Linux containers for my remote access servers instead of VMs, which ProxMox supports out of the box. A truly compelling feature of Proxmox is its integration with Turnkey Linux. You can download Turnkey Linux Container Templates directly in Proxmox and spin them up quickly. I used the Turnkey OpenVPN template to rebuild GATE, my OpenVPN server.

The performance improvement is remarkable. On Hyper-V, each Linux VM ate 512MB of RAM just to sit idle 99.9% of the time. So far I have 3 containers configured with 512MB of ram each, but they use roughly 25-50MB each and they leave the rest for the server. PORTAL, my Windows VM, still takes his share of the RAM and doesn’t give it back, but that’s nothing new.

Moar RAM == moar servers!On the plus side, efficient use of memory means that I can feel better about running a dedicated Linux box (container) for each application. Dedicated boxes mean that when I inevitably screw something up, it doesn’t affect the other applications that are running (that I haven’t screwed up yet.) Also, with pre-built containers and snapshots, you can toss machines that you screwed up without losing much time. I know, I know, rebuilding a Linux box instead of fixing it is sacrilege… but I got other shit to do.

On the minus side, containers don’t really act like VMs, especially when it comes to alternative network configurations. In particular, a Linux Container that uses a TUN or TAP interface needs some extra configuring. The TUN interface is how OpenVPN does its thing, so getting my GATE machine, the OpenVPN server that allows access to the DMZ on my internal network took a lot of fiddling with to get right. I did a bunch of Googling and I ended up with this forum post that recommends rebuilding the TUN interface at boot time with a script.

Here is the TUN script that I have graciously stolen so that I don’t have to Google it again (I didn’t even bother to change the German comments):

Then you enable the script and turn it on:chmod 755 /etc/init.d/tun
update-rc.d tun defaults

With this script, I was able to stand up a real OpenVPN server (not just an Access Server appliance) for unlimited concurrent connections! Not that I need them. I’m the only one that uses the VPN and most of the time I just use SSH tunnels anyway.

Since OpenVPN container templates make standing up servers so easy, I thought I’d build another one that works in reverse. In addition to GATE that lets OpenVPN clients route in to the DMZ, I thought I would use an OpenVPN client to route traffic from some DMZ hosts out to the Internet via Sweden. In the past, I used a VPN service to dump my Bittorrent box’s traffic this way, but I would like to extend that service to multiple machines. EVERYBODY GETS A VPN!

Öppna dörr. Getönda flörr.
I couldn’t figure out what a machine that does this kind of thing is called. It’s a server, but it serves up its client connection to other clients. It’s a router, but it just has the one network interface (eth0) that connects to a tunnel (tun0). It’s basically setting up a site-to-site VPN, but the other site is actually a secure gateway. This identity crisis led to a terminology problem that made finding documentation pretty tough. Fortunately, I found another pirate looking to do the same thing and stole his scripts 🙂

Since it’s a doorway to a VPN gateway to Sweden, I decided to call the box DÖRR, which is Swedish for “door”. I did this to maintain my trans-dimensional gateway theme (HUB, GATE, PORTAL, etc.)

Also, I would like to apologize to the entire region of Scandinavia for what I did you your languages to make the pun above.

The Turnkey Linux OpenVPN template sets up in one of 3 modes: “Server”, “Gateway”, or “Client”. “Server” is the option I went with for GATE, which allows OVPN clients the option of accessing local subnets. This is the “Server” portion of a Site-to-Site VPN or a corporate VPN. “Gateway” forces all OVPN clients to route all traffic through it, this is the config for secure VPN services like NordVPN or AirVPN. “Client” makes a client connection to another OVPN server. If you connect a “Client” to a “Server” you get the full Site-to-Site solution, but there is no documentation on Turnkey about setting up a “Site-to-Site Client” to route traffic from its internal subnet to the “Site-to-Site Server”.

What I am looking to do is configure a “Site-to-Site Client” but point it to a “Gateway”. Another important consideration when setting this up was that I didn’t want to do any meddling with the setup of my DMZ network. I just want to manually configure a host to use DÖRR as its default gateway. No need for proxies, DNSMasq, DHCP or anything like that. Just static IP’s, the way God intended it 🙂

Step 1 – The Site-to-Site Client
Once I got the container running, I had to fix the /dev/tun problem (the script above) and then make some config changes to OpenVPN.

Because this is a VPN client, and not a server, you need to get the OpenVPN client profile loaded. The bulk of my experience with OpenVPN clients is on Windows where you start the client when you need it. For this application you need to automatically run the OpenVPN connect process at boot and keep it running indefinitely.

First, you need to obtain a client config. I downloaded my ‘client.ovpn’ file from my VPN provider, and I copied it to /etc/openvpn/client.conf as root. You can name the files whatever you want, just remember what you named them because it’s important later.

cp /root/client.ovpn /etc/openvpn/client.conf

Now test the connection to make sure everything worked

openvpn --config /etc/openvpn/client.conf &

The & is important because it puts the OpenVPN process into the background, so that you get your command prompt back by pressing ENTER a couple of times. You can then test your Internet connection to see what your IP is a few different ways. You can use SSH with a dynamic port and tunnel your web traffic thru it with a SOCKs proxy. You could use curl or lynx to view a page that will display your IP. Or you could just use wget. I like to use ifconfig.co like so:

wget -qO- ifconfig.co

If all goes well, you should see your VPN provider’s IP and not your ISP’s.

Once you get the VPN client working, you then want it to start up and connect at boot time. You do this by setting the ‘autostart’ option in /etc/default/openvpn.

nano /etc/default/openvpn
AUTOSTART="client"

If you changed your ‘/etc/openvpn/client.conf’ filename, you change the name here. The AUTOSTART value is the name of that file minus the ‘.conf’

Now reboot your server and do your wget test again to make sure that the VPN connection is starting automatically.

Once that is working, you have to route traffic. This means IPTables, because OpenVPN and IPTables go together like pizza and beer.

Step 2 – De Routningen

Normally to route traffic between interfaces on Linux, you have to add IP forwarding (echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward etc.) In this case, the Turnkey OpenVPN template has already done that for you. All you have to do add a few forwarding rules:

Now it’s time to test them. For this you need a client computer with a static IP. For the default gateway you want to use the static IP that you assigned to eth0 on your VPN doorway server. I used 192.168.0.254 for DÖRR. If your test box also shows your VPN provider’s IP when you access a site like ipleak.net then it’s time to make those rules permanent. By saving them to /etc/iptables.up.rules. It is important to save them to that specific file because the Turnkey template calls that file when setting up the eth0 interface in /etc/network/interfaces.

iptables-save | tee /etc/iptables.up.rules

I don’t know why it’s set up that way. I’m just here to make awful jokes about Germanic languages.

Once that’s done, reboot the doorway server one last time and test with your client computer with the alternate default gateway.

Now that the my VPN client is working again, I need to rebuild my BitTorrent machine. I am going to try to save some more RAM by going with another Turnkey Linux container template.

EDIT: In my elation over getting something to work, I forgot to change the default gateway back. Unfortunately my test machine was PORTAL, which happens to control my dynamic DNS. So currently all of my hostnames are pointed at Sweden, LÖL.

chris@chrizzle23.com

Husband, Father, Veteran, cypher punk, hacker spacer, gamer, lover of privacy, free speech, and filthy scumm pirates. My opinions are my own and do not reflect those of hive13, Cinci2600, or my current employer.